essentially arbitrary boundary

[ essentially arbitrary boundary ]

you have seen me standing beneath a sparrow
midwinter, staring at the jack pines' fullness.
I reminded you: ice shocks piling up
in the heart. Apian shiver. But not loudly.
The sky is a tumult, a muffler grey
and worn, a complete knowledge of every gene
within an unknown animal. Heaven tells us nothing
past a small moon drifting across the muddied teeth.
A coming chill against my cheeks, covering
breathing. The body's strict integration mapped out
by its reflection in vague trees. I'd like to say,
I know that blood's in me, at least a thimbleful,
I know there is nothing my finger can't trace,
I know my weariness has a man in it. How it feeds,
finds a mate and, ultimately, is another organism
with indifferent curiosity. I will cry a little.
I will carve my story into this tree. Sandstone
and scrub elms. Discernible only through
direct study: the foamy berth of spittle bugs
acts rapidly to dissipate the earth's cruel
ammonia waste. The gift of fire,
can suddenly be reached, held,
dropped. It must seem so clear to you.
How, say, this minutiae ends, where my breath insists
under trees over stone walls. The only way
to break doldrums, you suggest,
is to dispense with vestments of un-
natural safety. The observer and the observed.
The air becoming no air becoming air again.
I think half-thoughts. I do not exchange my own
suspension.
I am standing here or leaning on the prow.
* * * * *

How We Exchange Ourselves

[ How We Exchange Ourselves ]

I think of you
and a place in air making that boundary
and I'm there too, simply by thinking
Pollock. This is one way of rediscovering our capacity
for hope. The distance through the trees erased. Imagine
Autumn nearly over some leaves crisp
and brown have fallen some are yellow
we walk on to a horizon line that's bea-
utifully keen, sonorous and doesn't sag
beneath our variable weight. At the center
of the park a landscape photographer
who remembered the rose
of the Rose of the World rising up from memory's perfect
desire. Odor of lanolin, the wrinkled petal
pressed to your palm. The jack pines
will shed their shadow before rest,
as (in)visible momentum is felt, one shoe on
one shoe off; together my total sense: your lips part revealing
two perfect dawns colored like an only tree.
Seen through you the great works of Bellini, you are greater.
I will position the inexorable sky behind the hard light.
I will take up various tasks in the garden.
I will whisper beyond what telescopes can see.
* * * * *

a letter to cast the october chill into oblivion,

[ a letter to cast the october chill into oblivion, ]

.........................to find........your way
....................................back
.......................to way way way beyond
........................the pacific
........................the golden gate bridge
................a.........spreading..........of........wings
.................................ledges near......the
...........falling off....................................wordsbreak
.................with your peculiar......twist
...............to step wildly
..........................or run away toward another story

.................snow weighs the wind verily insists on
...........i'm feeling billowy and farfetched, i confess
........................myself in glimpses
...................................of your forthcoming

.......................white inside of mind
...........................and reaching for your don't
...............count....your hatchlings
......................before the ineluctable

..........climax you left under your usual dream
..........to fond......to know where you live
..........to search of a story but something wasn't
.................reluctant....enough, if

................................newspapers turn yellow
................as graceful as drapes, as if i came in search
................with eyes in the fire with
..........an entire kitchen......listen through your fingers
.....enough early darkness..........enough forgotten beaches
...enough of more to................enough......mordant self
.....tired eyes....and.......................thin lips...even if
........light falls....onto.......................your stomach
.......it is...tempting...............to read deeper meaning
....................of willows of wheat of
.................and you, C, who had from
.........................the refusal of as it was
.................a rope of symmetry
.............................* * * * *